Redesign 'write a reply' interface

[hsenag]

It's not very easy to understand where a reply you go will be sent to.

Firstly, people can miss the green box listing the alternatives altogether, which is probably fine most of the time as the default will be ok.

However even if you do look at the box, the text you get for each possible target address is often confusing because it depends on the "real name" part of the incoming email addresses.

One option for making it clearer might be to actually make the email addresses explicit, though that goes somewhat against our current policy of keeping those addresses hidden. Another might be for the choice of reply targets to make explicit which messages they relate to, or to go back to the old UI of being able to write a reply on each message.

See also #778 (and #426 if it's still relevant).

[acrostich]

What would help would be to make the default the most likely best choice. One option would be to have a time-based mechanism to select the default email address to write the reply to.

It is likely that if a requester replies in the next few days after a response has been sent in, it should be addressed to the email address that sent the response (the current default). However if a requester writes a reply a month later, then the generic email address makes more sense as whoever sent the response has likely moved on to other tasks (currently not the case).

Now the exact cut off between these two has to be set arbitrarily. Maybe one week? In any case this could be clearly stated in the green box, i.e., 'this reply will be sent to the email that sent the last response as it was received within a week' or 'this reply will be sent to the generic FoI email address as it has been more than a week the last response was received', before offering the requester to choose another of the available email addresses available.

[RichardTaylor]

This is still presenting confusing options to users.

Perhaps all we need is logic along the lines of: if the last message wasn't "from" the public body's request address then provide an option to send the reply to the request address? We could describe that as the "main contact address for [body name] and no longer show the "real name" part from the incoming "from" line.

I like the simplicity of my first suggestion there; but have another idea too: how about making what we do invisible to the user completely and where the last message wasn't "from" the request address cc'ing in the request address? (This would result in more auto-response acknowledgements ending up on request threads in some cases). This might breach the "principle of least surprise"; and I could imagine some users and public bodies getting confused.

Examples of the kind of undesirable options we're currently giving our users

#426 was another example.

[TomSteinberg]

I've renamed this to make it match tickets like #1523

[ChristopherWhitmey]

In a recent FOI I was told: "it would be helpful if future correspondence is directed to myself, as your request was addressed to the 'Ministers' email box and this tends to delay matters while the correct part of the department is located.".

Hovering over the purple incoming links I saw that:
693027= DfE Ministerial and Public Communications Division on 150814
729003= SB on 151105
735826= SB on 151120

Checking SB's previous link refs I see that each one is unique. From the above it appears that the SB link on the Write a Reply page is not the latest one. But I accept that the real email behind both might be the same!

I wonder if the following rubric on the 'Write a Reply' page might help:
e.g. Department for Education Hovering over this link the last number is the last number on the link of an incoming message. Use this link to reply to that person.

Or to save having it after each link a rubric at the top:

To help ensure you reply to the person who sent the message under reply hover over each link in turn. The last number is the last number on the link of an incoming message from a particular email address. Use this link to reply to that person.

I suppose a more complex way would be to code the programme so that the name of the signatory was extracted from the message and put after the reply link !

Is it possible to amend the Write a Reply page to make a very friendly website even friendlier please?

[olineham]

A further illustration (from FYI.org.nz) of how this can be a real usability problem:

See also #10 regarding letting users see email addresses under certain circumstances.

[garethrees]

Closing as a duplicate of #4354, as that one has more recent thinking.